<h1 class="left">Queer is an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s 1985 novel of the same title. The story is a semi-autobiographical recounting of an (ill-conceived) affair between the fast-talking American expat William Lee (Burroughs) and the young, pencil-nimble GI, Eugene Allerton. Daniel Craig plays Lee, and Drew Starkey is the prickly perfect Allerton.</h1>
<h1 class="centre">A few minutes into the film, Craig swaggers down a road, smoking something crystalline, and wearing a dust amber suit. It is post-WWII 1950s Mexico in the late gloaming, lit by bars coloured in a palette of benevolent, neon imagination. Nirvana’s ‘Come As You Are’ blares anthemic and unself-consciously anachronistic. And you think this will be another Craig performance of easy charm and masculine cool, à la James Bond. Except very quickly, Craig is less Bond, more bumbling, speaking in circular stories nobody is really listening to, paying for cheap motel room sex. Forget everything you knew about filmic explorations of beautiful men doing drugs and exploring each other’s bodies. This story of masculinity and good tailoring is told by Guadagnino at the top of his game. It begins comfortably in the director’s wheelhouse of meticulously stylised mise en scene and statuesque men. But Queer is not easy in the way that Call Me By Your Name or Challengers were. Queer is rough and beautiful and severe. It’s somewhere between being a plea to be lit on fire and a confession of being inflamed.</h1>
<h1 class="right">Charmingly, Lee and Allerton have their meet-cute at a cock fight. The 2 hours and some minutes that come after unravel an obsessive and mostly one-sided passion that Lee develops for Allerton, who may or may not be gay. The two watch a film, wander through streets, drink, smoke, and sometimes fuck (there is a financial aspect to this relationship). The final act takes place in the jungles of Ecuador, with psychedelics and an admittedly ridiculous trip scene. But Queer, like its protagonist Lee, can be forgiven for its deranged indulgences of excess and clingy, oftentimes cringe-worthy sense of devotion. It can be forgiven because Lee and Queer offer a cultural rarity: an unhedged, sincere portrait of a feeling, devoid of irony.</h1>
<h1 class="left">Streaming on January 31st on MUBI, the film has reminded audiences that the world is farther from progressiveness as we’d like to admit; MUBI had to cancel its film festival in Istanbul after Queer, the opener, was banned from being screened by local authorities. Apparently, Queer “contains provocative content that would endanger the peace of the society and the ban would be implemented for security reasons.” And Queer is somewhat provocative. It has much to say (to those who care to endure its moments of convolution) about the alienations of homosexuality, and its fragmentations of body and mind, identity and individual. Pushing up against the limits of language — with its insistence on classification and inability to reflect a splintering desire — Lee wants to talk through touch. He is utterly preoccupied with the idea of telepathy. He cannot stop grazing Allerton in an effort to uncover how he feels, and whether there are in him, too, icebergs of want. Is it just money for the young Adonis-type? Or could there be something less banal in their bedtimes?</h1>
<h1 class="centre">“I’m not queer, I’m disembodied,” Lee says first in a dream sequence. Later, in the even more phantasmagoric ayahuasca sequence, Allerton repeats the refrain. Is this telepathy? Perhaps it is a confession dressed like a negation. Perhaps it is the kind of truth only touch (or psychedelics) can uncover. Lee — drunk and high — isn’t sure, and neither is the audience. All that’s certain is that the queered effort to try and want makes space for lack and emptiness. The score highlights this quite clearly. The lyric “how can a man who sees and feels be other than sad?” from the original track ‘Vaster Than Empires’ by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Caetano Veloso hangs over the film like the perpetual threat of comedown.</h1>
<h1 class="right">Queer argues that the cruellest response to passion is not rejection, it is ambiguity. Starkey nails opacity in a performance as Allerton that inspires — alternately — awe for the aloofness and winces for the nonchalance (“hot on the outside and cold on the inside,” Lee whines). One of the first on-screen kisses between Allerton and Lee begins with Allterton saying, “well, if you insist.” Starkey’s obscurity is faithful to the character, but he sometimes becomes uninteresting to watch, especially against the bulging vivacity of Craig.</h1>
<h1 class="centre">Guadagnino darkens the tropical wasting with the tactile theme of Lee’s heroin addiction. It acts as a metaphor (or a compounding factor) to push Lee to depravity in search of some unspeakable ecstasy. The message seems to be that desiring pleasure inheres neither happiness nor goodness. It stands as its own emotion, somewhere between body and soul and mind, insisting upon itself. The speculated-as-queer poet Langston Hughs writes in ‘Desire’:</h1>
<h1 class="centre">“Desire to us</h1>
<h1 class="centre">Was like a double death,</h1>
<h1 class="centre">Swift dying</h1>
<h1 class="centre">Of our mingled breath,</h1>
<h1 class="centre">Evaporation</h1>
<h1 class="centre">Of an unknown strange perfume</h1>
<h1 class="centre">Between us quickly</h1>
<h1 class="centre">In a naked</h1>
<h1 class="centre">Room.”</h1>
<h1 class="centre">Queer is like that—full of double deaths, ambiguity, and the addictive high of a strange perfume.</h1>
<h1 class="full">Queer is an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s 1985 novel of the same title. The story is a semi-autobiographical recounting of an (ill-conceived) affair between the fast-talking American expat William Lee (Burroughs) and the young, pencil-nimble GI, Eugene Allerton. Daniel Craig plays Lee, and Drew Starkey is the prickly perfect Allerton.</h1>
<h1 class="full">A few minutes into the film, Craig swaggers down a road, smoking something crystalline, and wearing a dust amber suit. It is post-WWII 1950s Mexico in the late gloaming, lit by bars coloured in a palette of benevolent, neon imagination. Nirvana’s ‘Come As You Are’ blares anthemic and unself-consciously anachronistic. And you think this will be another Craig performance of easy charm and masculine cool, à la James Bond. Except very quickly, Craig is less Bond, more bumbling, speaking in circular stories nobody is really listening to, paying for cheap motel room sex. Forget everything you knew about filmic explorations of beautiful men doing drugs and exploring each other’s bodies. This story of masculinity and good tailoring is told by Guadagnino at the top of his game. It begins comfortably in the director’s wheelhouse of meticulously stylised mise en scene and statuesque men. But Queer is not easy in the way that Call Me By Your Name or Challengers were. Queer is rough and beautiful and severe. It’s somewhere between being a plea to be lit on fire and a confession of being inflamed.</h1>
<h1 class="full">Charmingly, Lee and Allerton have their meet-cute at a cock fight. The 2 hours and some minutes that come after unravel an obsessive and mostly one-sided passion that Lee develops for Allerton, who may or may not be gay. The two watch a film, wander through streets, drink, smoke, and sometimes fuck (there is a financial aspect to this relationship). The final act takes place in the jungles of Ecuador, with psychedelics and an admittedly ridiculous trip scene. But Queer, like its protagonist Lee, can be forgiven for its deranged indulgences of excess and clingy, oftentimes cringe-worthy sense of devotion. It can be forgiven because Lee and Queer offer a cultural rarity: an unhedged, sincere portrait of a feeling, devoid of irony.</h1>
<h1 class="full">Streaming on January 31st on MUBI, the film has reminded audiences that the world is farther from progressiveness as we’d like to admit; MUBI had to cancel its film festival in Istanbul after Queer, the opener, was banned from being screened by local authorities. Apparently, Queer “contains provocative content that would endanger the peace of the society and the ban would be implemented for security reasons.” And Queer is somewhat provocative. It has much to say (to those who care to endure its moments of convolution) about the alienations of homosexuality, and its fragmentations of body and mind, identity and individual. Pushing up against the limits of language — with its insistence on classification and inability to reflect a splintering desire — Lee wants to talk through touch. He is utterly preoccupied with the idea of telepathy. He cannot stop grazing Allerton in an effort to uncover how he feels, and whether there are in him, too, icebergs of want. Is it just money for the young Adonis-type? Or could there be something less banal in their bedtimes?</h1>
<h1 class="full">“I’m not queer, I’m disembodied,” Lee says first in a dream sequence. Later, in the even more phantasmagoric ayahuasca sequence, Allerton repeats the refrain. Is this telepathy? Perhaps it is a confession dressed like a negation. Perhaps it is the kind of truth only touch (or psychedelics) can uncover. Lee — drunk and high — isn’t sure, and neither is the audience. All that’s certain is that the queered effort to try and want makes space for lack and emptiness. The score highlights this quite clearly. The lyric “how can a man who sees and feels be other than sad?” from the original track ‘Vaster Than Empires’ by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Caetano Veloso hangs over the film like the perpetual threat of comedown.</h1>
<h1 class="full">Queer argues that the cruellest response to passion is not rejection, it is ambiguity. Starkey nails opacity in a performance as Allerton that inspires — alternately — awe for the aloofness and winces for the nonchalance (“hot on the outside and cold on the inside,” Lee whines). One of the first on-screen kisses between Allerton and Lee begins with Allterton saying, “well, if you insist.” Starkey’s obscurity is faithful to the character, but he sometimes becomes uninteresting to watch, especially against the bulging vivacity of Craig.</h1>
<h1 class="full">Guadagnino darkens the tropical wasting with the tactile theme of Lee’s heroin addiction. It acts as a metaphor (or a compounding factor) to push Lee to depravity in search of some unspeakable ecstasy. The message seems to be that desiring pleasure inheres neither happiness nor goodness. It stands as its own emotion, somewhere between body and soul and mind, insisting upon itself. The speculated-as-queer poet Langston Hughs writes in ‘Desire’:</h1>
<h1 class="full">“Desire to us</h1>
<h1 class="full">Was like a double death,</h1>
<h1 class="full">Swift dying</h1>
<h1 class="full">Of our mingled breath,</h1>
<h1 class="full">Evaporation</h1>
<h1 class="full">Of an unknown strange perfume</h1>
<h1 class="full">Between us quickly</h1>
<h1 class="full">In a naked</h1>
<h1 class="full">Room.”</h1>
<h1 class="full">Queer is like that — full of double deaths, ambiguity, and the addictive high of a strange perfume.</h1>